


Marriage Prep

by wheel_pen



Series: Darkwood Eastport [29]
Category: Lie to Me (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Fish out of Water, Magic, Polygamy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-20 02:38:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3633561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luke has exciting news for his parents: he and Emma have been chosen as the guests of honor at their Marriage Prep class’s mock baby shower. This is an exalted position in Darkwood youth society, but Emma’s father isn’t sure he agrees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marriage Prep

**Author's Note:**

> The bad words are censored; that’s just how I do things. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play in this universe. I’ve given a lot of thought to the Darkwood culture, so if something seems confusing, feel free to ask. I hope you enjoy!

_Year five_

“Mum! Dad!” Luke called, the instant he stepped into the house from the garage. His sisters, who had followed him in, winced slightly at his volume but understood the reason for his excitement. “Guess what! Where are you? Hey, Dad!” he insisted, bounding across the entry hall when he saw his father finally emerge. “Guess what!”

“A new planet has been discovered beyond Pluto,” Cal guessed obtusely, handing the teenager a fussy toddler without ceremony. “No. Has someone successfully swum across the Indian Ocean? No.”

“Would you like a hint?” Luke asked dryly. “Oh, Clara, what’s wrong? Are you frustrated at your inability to communicate your needs and desires?”

Cal gave his son a thoughtful look. “Did you and Emma get chosen for the baby shower in the Marriage Prep class? Well done.”

“How did you know that?” Luke asked, following his father upstairs to the playroom. The question held a new level of importance lately as Luke eagerly studied his father as a professional model.

“You’ve just come back from the class,” Cal began, wading through the sea of small children and toys to his favorite vantage point. “You used absurdly clinical language with Clara, indicating you were still thinking about the class.”

“Perhaps I was just trying to be funny,” Luke suggested, setting the now-calmed little girl down.

“You should work on your sense of humor, then,” Cal judged. “Andy! How goes the spatio-motor control development?” The three-year-old looked up blankly from the picture he was coloring and Cal patted his head. “Good, keep at it. And also,” Cal added to Luke, “and this was the really crucial bit, so pay attention—here, let’s look in the mirror—Lord Red Water asked me about it a couple days ago.”

Luke looked at his father’s smirk in the mirror and rolled his eyes. “What did he ask about?”

“Oh, just if we’d mind if they picked you and Emma for the baby shower,” Cal shrugged. “George! No throwing. Some parents aren’t comfortable with it.”

Luke frowned slightly as he considered this. “Well, _someone_ has to be the guests of honor, don’t they? Catalina, can I play with you? Thank you!” The teenager dropped to the floor to poke at some blocks with the toddler.

“Sometimes they have a couple who’s been leading the class as the guests of honor,” Cal informed him idly. “Clara! No chewing. What’s your theme going to be? Hmm, _that_ doesn’t look good,” he added, seeing Luke’s dubious expression.

“Well, the first thing Emma thought of was _frogs_ ,” Luke revealed with a hint of distaste.

“Gender-neutral and energetic?” Cal guessed.

Luke nodded. “And _cute_ ,” he added, a bit sarcastically.

“Never underestimate the power of cuteness,” Cal warned him. “Yes, you know all about that, don’t you, George? What did I say about throwing?”

“But frogs are also kind of slimy and cold,” Luke protested, moving on from the disinterested Catalina to Esteban, who sat at a table diligently scribbling in a First Dawn worktext. “That doesn’t seem like a good theme to me.”

“Oh, lots of people use frogs,” Cal shrugged, directing Clara away from chewable items and towards the play kitchen set. “Green, energy, life, water, movement… One of your grandmothers had a frog nursery.”

“I just think something like ducks would be better,” Luke decided, showing Esteban how to trace a letter of the alphabet in his book. “They’re energetic, friendly, water-based… Emma’s favorite color is yellow. And they have feathers, which is so much nicer.”

Cal snorted at his assessment. “Well keep this in mind—what if Emma doesn’t want to use her _real_ idea for the class baby shower? Maybe she doesn’t want to wear it out.”

Clearly Luke hadn’t considered that. “Mum had Noah’s ark before, didn’t she?” he asked after a moment. “And flowers for the bunny room. And now she’s got nursery rhymes and butterflies. What did Madru have before?”

By ‘before,’ he of course meant back in the Valley. “Blue airplanes,” Cal answered, unable to completely hide his bemusement. “And some kind of rainforest-jungle theme for the bunny room.” Now Ria’s nursery—currently occupied by Catalina—was bold back-and-red ladybugs, and her bunny room—the glorified closet that Catalina would transition to when the next baby was born sometime next year—was decorated with primary colored fish. It wasn’t technically based on Dr. Seuss’s classic of nonsense _One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish_ , but it reminded Cal of the idea. “You could build a nursery around a kids’ book you both like.”

“Yeah, we went through that idea in class,” Luke agreed. “My group had to brainstorm ideas for a nursery decorated to _The Very Hungry Caterpillar_. Emma’s group had to do one based on Monet paintings!” he added with a residue of disbelief. “They did a really good job, though.”

Cal just shook his head. “You kids today are so sophisticated!” he claimed, only partially in jest. “When I took Marriage Prep classes, nursery designing consisted of picking a color and an object, and making all the furniture match. One year we ended up with blue stripes and polka dots! The kid would’ve had a seizure. Anyway,” he added, more seriously, “well done and all. It’s a lot of work, though, sorting through all the choices here. Go tell your mother.”

“Okay!” Luke gave the focused Esteban a pat on the head, stood from the low table, and headed into the elementary classroom, where his mother was rocking a baby and supervising the younger class of scholars, from Charlotte in Pink—her pencil covered in teeth-marks—to Sophia in Dark Green. “Hey, Mum,” he whispered, kissing her cheek. The younger kids could get distracted rather easily.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Gillian greeted. “Do you want to hold Arthur? They get fussy if they’re not doing the same thing.”

“Sure.” Luke sat down on a chair next to her and picked up a second baby who was flailing around in his carrier. “Shh, Arthur, it’s okay! There you are! Did Dad tell you about me and Emma?” he asked. “We’re going to get the baby shower!”

Gillian smiled brightly at him. “That’s wonderful! Congratulations! It’s a lot of work, though,” she warned, as Cal had. “But such good practice!”

“You and Dad were never in a Marriage Prep class together, right?” he confirmed curiously.

His mother smirked a bit. “Yes, your father was _long_ done with them before I even started. He had to take a refresher course—for ‘late bloomers,’ they called it.”

Luke snickered a little. “Well, I guess there really wasn’t much competition for it,” he decided modestly, of the baby shower. “There’s only a few other couples, and none have been together as long as me and Emma.”

Or were _herdaya_ , or promised, Gillian thought to herself, with the mixture of pride and melancholy that seeing one’s children grow up always inspired. “Well don’t think you know it all already!” she teased. “You’ve still got a couple more years to go. Oh, you should go tell your Madru and Ladru,” she suggested. “Have your Ladru tell you about how he was almost kicked out of his class for arguing that all nurseries should be the same. Oh, and write to your grandparents, too! Make sure they get an invitation.”

**

Cal was not very surprised when Sheriff Burke called later that evening. “ _What’s this about a_ baby shower?” he asked suspiciously. Every time he thought he had the Darkwood social rules down, they threw him a curve ball.

“It’s just a _mock_ baby shower, for the Marriage Prep class,” Cal assured him, as Emma no doubt already had. “They do one every year. It’s considered a great honor to be the couple chosen to receive it. And it’s good practice for everyone involved, to see how it’s really done.”

“ _Well… when I was in high school, the kids who took home ec had to plan a mock wedding_ ,” the sheriff remembered, a bit grudgingly. “ _I suppose this is the more important thing for you guys_.”

“That’s right,” Cal agreed. Darkwood weddings were minimalist, with only the most basic elements required by one’s religion or culture—and no showers, no parties, no reception either. But baby showers, on the other hand—even _before_ coming to America they had been elaborate festivities of food, flowers, décor, and gifts. Now they were even _more_ expansive.

“Luke and Emma actually have to do a lot of serious work,” Cal went on, to reassure the sheriff. “They have to research all the baby items they want and register for them—they’ll have to write a report on why they chose that car seat and this bottle system, with supporting documentation.”

“ _Wow_.” Burke seemed suitably impressed, if still slightly unnerved, by this attention to detail. “ _What do the other kids do? Just plan the party? Emma said something about ‘role-playing’_ …”

“Oh yes,” Cal agreed with relish. “For the first baby shower ever for a clan—which this mock-up is meant to represent—the parents of the couple have specific roles to play, different items that they buy and arrange for the celebration. It’s a big job,” he reminded the sheriff. “The other students have to decide on a guest list, invitations, food, flowers, favors, decorations… _and_ then they’ll have to be ordinary guests and buy appropriate presents, _and_ run the shower once it starts. It can be a challenge for a smaller group.”

There were enough Darkwood teenagers of Marriage Prep age—including a few interested parties of non-Darkwood origin, like Emma—that there were actually _two_ Marriage Prep groups now, with roughly a dozen students each. That was generally the size of the groups in the Valley, small enough to encourage participation but large enough to role-play all the key members of a typical Darkwood family. The Red Waters led one group, and the Grey Staffs the other—the one _without_ the youngest Grey Staff girls in it, of course, because it was felt that the frank discussions needed for a truly helpful and thought-provoking experience were perhaps best not had between parent and child, in the context of a classroom with everyone else watching. Sadly, in Cal’s view, there were enough Orange Lights spread out across the ages that he would likely never get a chance to pass his considerable knowledge and wisdom along in a formal setting—unless he could contrive to get all his children stuffed into one section, which wasn’t really the preferred method.

“ _So everyone does all this planning_ ,” the sheriff confirmed, “ _and then—they get graded and have a little party for fun or something?_ ”

Here Cal was slightly confused. Telephone conversations were more difficult to interpret than face-to-face ones. “Well, they have the actual baby shower party, and it’s smaller than a real one would be, if that’s what you mean.”

It wasn’t. “ _What do you mean, they have the_ actual _baby shower?_ ” Burke persisted.

“Well, of course no one is actually _pregnant_ ,” Cal assured him, as he seemed to be somewhat sensitive on this point. “But all the students get together at someone’s house, with the food and flowers and décor and favors they planned, and Luke and Emma receive the gifts people bought for them.”

“ _But—what—Who_ pays _for all this?_ ” Burke sputtered. It was clearly the least of his questions.

“Oh, the Darkwood families will,” Cal told him quickly. “We wouldn’t make anyone else pay for it. We consider it an essential skill to learn, we don’t mind the cost.” When you considered that _every_ Darkwood pregnancy merited a baby shower, and ladies typically had ten children each (though the last two were twins)—to say nothing of the equivalent adoption parties, or birthday parties for that matter—going through a full ‘dress rehearsal’ didn’t seem excessive at all to Darkwood parents.

“ _Okay, but—what about all the—baby toys and stuff?_ ” Burke continued. “ _Is Emma supposed to keep it?_ ”

Cal had suggested before that Sheriff Burke peruse Emma’s Marriage Prep textbook closely—the local Council was working on materials and workshops to help orient non-Darkwood parents like him whose children might marry into Darkwood clans—but now didn’t seem the time to remind him. “Well, she and Luke will have to write thank-you notes for everything, and have the experience of dividing out the twenty percent,” Cal explained. “Then once the role-playing is complete they’ll donate the items to a local charity.” He paused, uncertain whether the sheriff had gotten the idea yet. “No need to dispose of the food, generally, the kids usually manage to eat it all themselves.”

This comment seemed to lighten the mood a bit. “ _No, I guess not!_ ” he agreed. “ _Say, are these things co-ed? Do the young guys really go in for that sort of thing?_ ”

“Well, sometimes the men drift in and out a bit,” Cal admitted. “We don’t mind _using_ the diapers, we just don’t like cooing over a package of them as a gift.” _He_ didn’t, anyway.

Burke seemed to understand this idea, at least. “ _Am I expected to attend this thing?_ ” he finally asked, with great trepidation. “ _As the father of the, er,_ pretend _mom-to-be?_ ” He emphasized the word ‘pretend.’

“No, no, of course not, Sheriff,” Cal replied quickly. _Real_ parents at a _mock_ shower? “That would just be weird.”

**Author's Note:**

> That’s it for Darkwood Eastport! I hope you’ve enjoyed it.


End file.
